(edited from April, 2011 post)

A friend called Spring “Hot Dog Season”.  I thought it was in deference to baseball, but it was because with all her family’s activities, that’s all she has time to make for dinner these days.   I recommended Menu Planning, and here’s why!

Menu planning is the strategic planning of your meals for the week.  It enables us to use our resources well, saving time and money, and making the most of our storage space. If we had special considerations like food allergies or a special diet, menu planning would be even more invaluable, helping us focus on what we can eat, not what we cannot.

So, how to do it?  On a piece of paper, spreadsheet or on this week’s calendar page:

1. List the days of the week, and set some themes, if you’d like, to help you come up with ideas (my biggest personal challenge is just coming up with ideas).  For example, ours are:

• Sunday: Family Dinner / New Recipes
• Monday: Soup / Salad / Sandwiches
• Tuesday: Italian
• Wednesday: Mexican
• Thursday: Grill-ables
• Friday: Pizza / Lenten Friday
• Saturday: Seafood / Grill-ables / New Recipes

2.  Come up with a list of 10-15 Favorites for your family, perhaps in keeping with the aforementioned themes. I try a new recipe every week or 2, and add it to our list of favorites if the family really likes it.

3.  Look at this week’s schedule, noting special events or arrangements.  Then put it all together:

• Sunday (Sunday Dinner): Family Party in Michigan – No cooking for me!
• Monday (Soup/Salad/Sandwiches) (CCD – early / easy dinner) – Chili / Mac and Cheese
• Tuesday (Italian): Spaghetti and Meatballs
• Wednesday (Mexican): Chicken tacos (make rice and chicken in the morning)
• Thursday (Grill-ables) (Band After school, late dinner) – Pork Chops and sweet potatoes
• Friday: (Meatless) – Pizza and salad
• Saturday: (Grill-ables): (Birthday dinner) Corned Beef, Mashed Potatoes

Tips to make it work:

1. Realize any good plan is a flexible plan. We use our menu plan as an inventory for what we have on hand. If my plan for today falls through, I can look at the menu for later in the week, and know what else I have on hand to cook.
2. Enlist Aid: Get your family to help with planning and implementation of menu planning. When my sons help me plan, they are assured of having things they like to eat from every meal, so it is worth it to them to help me out.  In addition, they are more likely to eat  a meal they had a hand in preparing.  They are pretty good sous chefs, cleaning and peeling vegetables, shredding cheese, reading recipes or directions on boxes, setting and clearing the table.
3. Cook dinner in the morning (or the day before).  Right now, our dinner hour is crazier than our mornings, so we get creative! Anything taking more than 30 minutes to make is relegated to the weekend, the Crock Pot, or a different time of day.  We love Spanish rice with our taco night, but it takes 35 minutes to make, so I make it in the morning and leave it in the fridge to warm up at dinner time. I have gone so far as to assemble 3 casseroles on Sunday for the next three days.
4. Double up on your prep:

• Clean and prep your veggies when you bring them home.  We shred a cup or two of carrots for recipes later in the week, dice extra onions or peppers, split up meat into appropriate serving sizes and add marinade while frozen.
• We brown 3 pounds of ground meat at once, re-freezing it in 1 pound blocks, thawing as needed.
• We also cook or grill extra meats to put in salads or soups later in the week. Which leads me to ….

5.  Get over your LeftOvers.

•  You may have to sell the idea of Leftovers to your family, but they are a valuable component of menu planning. If it weren’t for leftovers, my hubby would eat out downtown for lunch every day. At $10 a meal. Yikes.  There are days we would starve if not for leftovers!
• Call them something else, or Pair them with a positive experience. Instead of left-over night, call it Tater-Tot Night or Dessert night, or whatever will make your own family happy.
• Pair a left over of one thing with a new side and a new veggie, or make it look different, like grilled chicken breasts from Monday sliced and layered on a Caesar salad on Wednesday.

Off to class and baseball practice and scouts, so glad I planned my dinner!  Try these ideas this week, and let me know what you think of menu planning!